Today’s a big day for the ever-churning vat of intergalactic intrigue that is EVE Online. It just went free-to-play, which means a big influx of players to disrupt the universe’s precarious balance of power. I spoke with the game’s executive producer, Andie Nordgren, about how corporations are already using that to…

EVE Online can get pretty intense. From battles that cost $300,000 in damages to histories so complex that a book was written about them, the long running MMO can get very serious. Now, a personal disagreement has led to a hefty bounty.

After more than a decade spent slowly building a tight-knit community of paying customers, science fiction MMO EVE Online is ready to open the free-to-play floodgates. With the introduction of Clone States in November’s big update, everybody can play EVE Online for free.

Two weeks ago, at EVE Fanfest, a convention for players of space MMO EVE Online, I began hearing odd snatches of conversation: “Dude, the pope’s in our hotel”, “Did you kiss the ring?”. This is at the same time as the real pope is out in Greece meeting with refugees, so, clearly, we’re talking about a different pope.

EVE Online is a complicated game full of politics, subterfuge, and grand-scale wars. Factions rise and fall, corporations are overthrown, and you don’t have to play the game to know that a lot of what’s going on in it is really cool.

After two years of relative peace, various recent events are dragging the players of online space MMO EVE Online towards another massive war. This time it’s between the game’s biggest coalition, The Imperium, against an alliance of smaller factions.

Here are some excellent comparisons, by tonymyre311, of all the ship models (and other objects) from EVE Online, dropped onto Google Earth landscapes and edited so they look like they’re part of the map.

It's early days for VR, which means there aren't many games to get excited about. EVE: Valkryie, however, in one of the few "real" games coming. I've always loved my time with the game, and the newest trailer shows how the atmosphere is coming together. It looks gorgeous.

Crowfall has made over $400,000 on Kickstarter in a day, and with good reason: it aims to break the wild, player-driven antics of MMOs like
EVE Online into time-based "campaigns" while combining them with complete world destructibility. It's an attempt at reinventing the genre, and a much-needed one.

One of my biggest gaming regrets is that I've never taken the time to really dig deep into EVE Online. This latest trailer, featuring the voices of actual players, is a monument to what everyone else is missing.